Mr. Speaker, in my opinion it was the beginning of the end for the effectiveness of parliamentary committees when parliamentary secretaries were parachuted onto them.
Parliamentary secretaries have access to cabinet documents. Their loyalty, obviously, is to the government that they serve and not to the committee as a whole. The beauty of parliamentary committees, in theory, is that baggage is left at the door and committee members are all equal no matter what party we are in. Our goal and mandate in committee is to work together in a collaborative way to create the best legislation possible.
As soon as parliamentary secretaries were put on the committees, they sabotaged, undermined and bastardized the work of the committees. I have seen it with my own eyes. Believe it not, the government even wanted parliamentary secretaries to be the chairs of committees. We had to take drastic action to at least curb that which we thought was ridiculous and would cause irreversible damage to the committees. I do not think parliamentary secretaries should be on committees.